CVE-2025-38557

MEDIUMNVD 5.55.5
EchelonGraph scoreMEDIUM confidence

Score 5.5 from GitHub Security Advisory published 2025-08-19. NVD baseline CVSS 5.5; sources differ by 0.0.

Triggered by: GitHub Security Advisory CVSS
Sources: epss, ghsa, nvd
5.5EG
EchelonGraph verdictMonitorLow exploitation likelihood right now — keep watching.
  • Lower severity and no public exploit yet
CISA-KEV: Not listedEPSS PROB: 0%CVSS: 5.5Exploit: None knownExposed: 0

A fix is available — apply it.

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:

HID: apple: validate feature-report field count to prevent NULL pointer dereference

A malicious HID device with quirk APPLE_MAGIC_BACKLIGHT can trigger a NULL pointer dereference whilst the power feature-report is toggled and sent to the device in apple_magic_backlight_report_set(). The power feature-report is expected to have two data fields, but if the descriptor declares one field then accessing field[1] and dereferencing it in apple_magic_backlight_report_set() becomes invalid since field[1] will be NULL.

An example of a minimal descriptor which can cause the crash is something like the following where the report with ID 3 (power report) only references a single 1-byte field. When hid core parses the descriptor it will encounter the final feature tag, allocate a hid_report (all members of field[] will be zeroed out), create field structure and populate it, increasing the maxfield to 1. The subsequent field[1] access and dereference causes the crash.

Usage Page (Vendor Defined 0xFF00) Usage (0x0F) Collection (Application) Report ID (1) Usage (0x01) Logical Minimum (0) Logical Maximum (255) Report Size (8) Report Count (1) Feature (Data,Var,Abs)

Usage (0x02) Logical Maximum (32767) Report Size (16) Report Count (1) Feature (Data,Var,Abs)

Report ID (3) Usage (0x03) Logical Minimum (0) Logical Maximum (1) Report Size (8) Report Count (1) Feature (Data,Var,Abs) End Collection

Here we see the KASAN splat when the kernel dereferences the NULL pointer and crashes:

[ 15.164723] Oops: general protection fault, probably for non-canonical address 0xdffffc0000000006: 0000 [#1] SMP KASAN NOPTI [ 15.165691] KASAN: null-ptr-deref in range [0x0000000000000030-0x0000000000000037] [ 15.165691] CPU: 0 UID: 0 PID: 10 Comm: kworker/0:1 Not tainted 6.15.0 #31 PREEMPT(voluntary) [ 15.165691] Hardware name: QEMU Standard PC (i440FX + PIIX, 1996), BIOS 1.16.2-debian-1.16.2-1 04/01/2014 [ 15.165691] RIP: 0010:apple_magic_backlight_report_set+0xbf/0x210 [ 15.165691] Call Trace: [ 15.165691] [ 15.165691] apple_probe+0x571/0xa20 [ 15.165691] hid_device_probe+0x2e2/0x6f0 [ 15.165691] really_probe+0x1ca/0x5c0 [ 15.165691] __driver_probe_device+0x24f/0x310 [ 15.165691] driver_probe_device+0x4a/0xd0 [ 15.165691] __device_attach_driver+0x169/0x220 [ 15.165691] bus_for_each_drv+0x118/0x1b0 [ 15.165691] __device_attach+0x1d5/0x380 [ 15.165691] device_initial_probe+0x12/0x20 [ 15.165691] bus_probe_device+0x13d/0x180 [ 15.165691] device_add+0xd87/0x1510 [...]

To fix this issue we should validate the number of fields that the backlight and power reports have and if they do not have the required number of fields then bail.

CVSS v3
5.5
EG Score
5.5(medium)
EG Risk
29(Track)
EG Risk 29/100SSVC: Track

EG Risk is EchelonGraph's 0–100 priority score: it fuses intrinsic severity with real-world exploitation and automatability so you can rank equal-severity CVEs and fix the most dangerous first. Higher = act sooner. Distinct from the 0–10 EG Score (severity).

How it’s computed
Severity55% × 45%
Exploitation0% × 40%
Automatability30% × 15%
Action: Routine — remediate on your standard cadence.
EPSS PROB
0%
EPSS %ILE
5%
KEV
Not listed

Published

August 19, 2025

Last Modified

November 28, 2025

Patch Availability(7)

Patches are aggregated from vendor advisories (Red Hat, Microsoft, Cisco, GitHub) and package ecosystems (OSV, GHSA). Multiple rows for the same upstream release have been deduplicated.

Weakness Classification(1)

MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration — the root-cause categories this CVE belongs to.

All Vendor Advisories

(6)

Data Freshness Timeline

(refreshed 6× in last 7d / 41× in last 30d)

Each row is a source pipeline that fetched or updated this CVE on that date, with what changed. For example, "NVD update" means NVD published or revised its analysis for this CVE; "MITRE cvelistV5" means we ingested or refreshed it from the CNA feed. Most recent first.

  1. 2026-07-30 01:29 UTCEPSS rescore
  2. 2026-07-28 15:35 UTCEPSS rescore
  3. 2026-07-25 14:17 UTCEPSS rescore
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  5. 2026-07-24 14:17 UTCEPSS rescore
  6. 2026-07-23 22:41 UTCOSV refresh
  7. 2026-07-23 02:54 UTCEG score recompute
  8. 2026-07-22 14:07 UTCEPSS rescore
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  10. 2026-07-21 15:24 UTCEPSS rescore
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  23. 2026-07-13 22:29 UTCEPSS rescore
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  1. 2026-07-12 05:46 UTCEPSS rescore
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  4. 2026-07-09 19:09 UTCEPSS rescore
  5. 2026-07-09 19:09 UTCEPSS rescore
  6. 2026-07-07 13:45 UTCEPSS rescore
  7. 2026-07-06 16:51 UTCOSV refresh
  8. 2026-07-06 16:27 UTCEPSS rescore
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  35. 2026-06-21 01:59 UTCEPSS rescore
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  37. 2026-06-18 17:52 UTCEPSS rescore
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  39. 2026-06-18 05:05 UTCOSV refresh
  40. 2026-06-17 17:52 UTCEPSS rescore
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  43. 2026-06-14 23:17 UTCEPSS rescore
  44. 2026-06-13 23:00 UTCEPSS rescore
  45. 2026-06-12 23:11 UTCEPSS rescore
  46. 2026-06-11 14:00 UTCEPSS rescore
  47. 2026-06-10 22:18 UTCEPSS rescore
  48. 2026-06-10 13:22 UTCEPSS rescore
  49. 2026-06-08 14:16 UTCEPSS rescore
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  51. 2026-06-07 15:24 UTCEPSS rescore
  52. 2026-06-06 13:47 UTCEPSS rescore
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  63. 2026-05-31 22:30 UTCEPSS rescore
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  65. 2026-05-31 00:16 UTCEPSS rescore
  66. 2026-05-30 00:15 UTCEG score recompute
  67. 2026-05-30 00:15 UTCVendor advisory
  68. 2026-05-30 00:15 UTCGHSA enrichment
  69. 2026-05-29 13:44 UTCEPSS rescore

Frequently asked(5)

What is CVE-2025-38557?
CVE-2025-38557 is a medium vulnerability published on August 19, 2025. In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: HID: apple: validate feature-report field count to prevent NULL pointer dereference A malicious HID device with quirk APPLEMAGICBACKLIGHT can trigger a NULL pointer dereference whilst the power feature-report is toggled and sent to…
When was CVE-2025-38557 disclosed?
CVE-2025-38557 was first published in the National Vulnerability Database on August 19, 2025, with the most recent update on November 28, 2025. EchelonGraph re-ingests CVE updates from NVD on a 2-hour cycle, so this page reflects the latest published state.
Is CVE-2025-38557 actively exploited?
CVE-2025-38557 is not currently on CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. FIRST EPSS estimates a 0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, which ranks it in the top 94.8% of all scored CVEs.
What is the CVSS score of CVE-2025-38557?
CVE-2025-38557 has a CVSS v3 base score of 5.5 (NVD).
How do I remediate CVE-2025-38557?
Patch to the fixed version published by the affected vendor. Where vendor advisories exist for CVE-2025-38557, EchelonGraph cross-links them in the Vendor Advisories panel below — those typically contain the canonical remediation steps, fixed version numbers, and any vendor-specific mitigations.

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